Welcome to the a new Music Highlights post in a long time! When I stopped posting Music Highlights posts a while back, I was thinking about making posts based on a specific theme, instead of just covering new releases, and it so happens that I suddenly got an idea in my head to write about.

A few weeks ago, I found myself on a pilgrim of sorts. A pilgrim to the songs of media-mix projects that fell off the map, that is. Their main content might have stopped a long time ago, or in a status of uncertainty. I couldn't get them off my mind, so I decided to write a post to talk about it.

A world connection

The first media-mix project I will be talking about is something from Atelier developer Gust. You might have heard about the Ar tonelico games. The creator of those games, Tsuchiya Akira, proceeded to go make a media-mix project. That project, is Kakuchou Shoujo-kei Trinary (Augmented Reality Girls Trinary).

It has an anime, and a mobile game. That might sound like something that a media-mix project like this would do, but the interesting thing that the anime and the game ran hand in hand, and people could watch the anime in the game during its airtime. The game itself is basically a VN with turn-based combat elements. However, the concept is such that the characters (who lives in the game world) are seemingly able to interact with the players (who live in the real world) via the internet. In which the player acts as fucking ChatGPT (well, I'm now worried that ChatGPT is actually someone else talking to us through the fabric of reality). Also, the character even have Twitter accounts! Just check this one for yourself. I did not have the fortune of trying out the game when it was live, but just hearing the worldbuilding that happens in this game, makes me both very curious and very overwhelmed. What an Tsuchiya Akira work, indeed.

I first discovered Trinary because of voice actor Hirayama Emi, who also voices Kitakami Reika in THE iDOLM@STER Million Live, and at first, I just enjoyed the songs that came out of it. After that, I forgot about it for a while, before I rediscovered it when I started playing Atelier games. By that time, the game has long since ended service, and I was only able to glean from the stuff that people uploaded while the game is still running. Nowadays, it exists just to sell merch from time to time (apparently Tsuchiya Akira also runs the store nowadays?)

Highlights: The Wishreal album, Floccinaucinihilipilificator (well, there is a reason I picked those songs...)

Crossfading music and story

The next media mix project that I will be talking about is something that I was only made aware of because of DEN-ON-BU collaborating with it: AKROGLAM. If Trinary is where anime and game go hand in hand, AKROGLAM is where music and story go hand in hand. The story is less accessible due to it only being available in Japanese, but the songs... oh the songs. The songs they have are total bangers, and they somehow got Pa's Lam System to make a song for them. That song has the most viewed MV in AKROGLAM's channel! Granted, that was an advert push, but still. Sadly, they ended all activities around 2022; the official website even got shut down and all that remains is a lit.link page. I still do not know who is actually behind the project, by the way.

The first time I discovered this project is, well, DEN-ON-BU's collab, in which they got Pa's Lam System, again. It is glorious. Also, they got Suzushiro Sayumi to voiced a character in this project (NINA). You know, the VA who voiced Ijichi Nijika. I did not realize it until I wondered why the Nijika VA follows AKROGLAM on Twitter. Oops.

Highlights: ilusion, Drive, Show Your Eyes

Knowing the value of something when you lose it

The last media mix project I like to highlight is SELECTION PROJECT, which I dived into because someone I know talked about it a lot.

The eponymous SELECTION PROJECT is a reality show where aspiring idols come to try their luck in having their big break. One of the participants is a sister of the previous season's winner, who died a few years before the start of the story- wait a minute, I heard of this somewhere. Yeah, early on, the comparisons to another contemporary idol media mix project, IDOLY PRIDE, caught my attention. The birthday of their respective characters whose sister died a few years prior to the story (for IDOLY PRIDE, that would be Nagase Kotono, and for SELECTION PROJECT, that would be Hananoi Rena) is the same, even (December 25!) That is a similarity that I will not be able to forget. That similarity also why I didn't really get into it at first... I already watched IDOLY PRIDE!

This project just, did not do well at all. It basically has the songs that are in the anime, and no more. However, the songs it does have is super interesting. The ending of the anime, "Only one yell", I did not expect it to be as good as it is. I also did not expect it to have drum'n'bass in B.B., and a groovy house song in Masquerade (Suzu☆Rena is absolutely cooking here, too bad they did not cook for long enough)

Highlights: B.B., Only one yell, Masquerade (Suzu☆Rena caught my eye, and Rena... let's just say that Kotono is my main idol in IDOLY PRIDE)

Sometimes, you only know the value of something when you lose it, and those projects didn't catch my attention on their heyday. When I discovered the hidden gems there only when they ended, I sometimes think to myself, "what could have been?"

All good things come to an end, they say. Even the projects that I am following at the moment, they won't last forever. I want to cherish them while they're still here.